Hoyer: Yeah, we’re punting the budget this year

posted at 4:33 pm on June 22, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

The primary responsibility of Congress under the Constitution is to pass a budget for the federal government. The Democrats have a 77-seat majority in the House and an 18-seat majority in the Senate, where filibusters won’t apply anyway on budgetary matters. Barack Obama’s presidency gives them a clear path to passing whatever budget Democrats desire for FY2011. And so, obviously, all of this has proven too much of a hurdle for Democrats to overcome, as Steny Hoyer admitted today:

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made official Tuesday morning what most insiders have known for months: Congress won’t do a budget this year.

Instead, Democrats are pushing an alternative route that falls well short of the more rigorous annual budget resolution — a short-term resolution that will call for discretionary spending lower than in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget. But he said Congress wouldn’t take longer-term budget action before hearing from Obama’s fiscal commission in December. Republicans have lambasted Democrats for not passing a budget resolution, saying that’s the first time it’s happened since 1976.

John Boehner wasted no time in blasting his counterparts across the aisle for dereliction of their first duty:

Republicans have already seized on the budgetary inaction. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) sent out a mocking statement that said: “We regret to inform you that the congressional budget for fiscal year 2011 has been canceled due to Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree.”

Debra Saunders notes that Democrats had defined such a failure in stark terms just four years ago:

“If you can’t budget, you can’t govern,” Rep. John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., proclaimed in 2006 when the House GOP leadership chose to dispense with passing a budget resolution.

Now that the Dems run the House, Spratt is chairman of its Budget Committee and the April 15 deadline for passing a budget resolution is a niggling detail, easily ignored. House Democrats have decided to not even try to pass a budget resolution before this fiscal year expires on Sept. 30 – and may well delay passage until after the November elections. …

But this year, Democrats won’t pass a budget resolution – which means there will be no limit on spending in next year’s 12 spending authorization bills. Democratic proposals to cut budgets by 2 percent won’t see a floor vote.

As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted last month, “The very reasonable push to reduce some discretionary spending has left the House unable to agree on a plan.” In short, D.C. lawmakers cannot curb the growth in government spending to save their own necks.

“Saving their own necks” is what this is all about. The Democrats in Congress believe what Rep. Gerry Connolly told the LA Times, which is that no member of Congress ever lost an election because of a failure to pass a budget. They don’t want to be on the hook for the hard decisions that must come in FY2011, which is either to drastically reduce spending from the binge levels of the last three Democratic Congresses, or to raise taxes to cover it. Spending cuts won’t change voter perception of this Congress at this late date — and tax hikes will make it worse.

Spratt is right — a failure to budget is a failure to govern. Democrats seem intent on proving their unworthiness to lead Congress in even its most basic tasks. At the same time, their leadership wants voters to trust them to make the most personal of decisions in their health care, as well as believe that they can cool the planet and lower the sea level with punitive taxes on energy production and boondoggles in alternative energy. They can’t even govern themselves.

At the same time, their leadership wants voters to trust them to make the most personal of decisions in their health care, as well as believe that they can cool the planet and lower the sea level with punitive taxes on energy production and boondoggles in alternative energy. They can’t even govern themselves.

such is the liberal arrogance….can’t pass a budget but they think they can cool the earth a tenth of a degree. math is hard but climate is easy???

In the shorter term, Hoyer raised the possibility that Congress will only temporarily extend middle-class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. He pointedly suggested that making them permanent would be too costly.

Tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, affecting taxpayers at every income level. President Barack Obama proposes to permanently extend them for individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000—at a cost of about $2.5 trillion over the next decade.

“As the House and Senate debate what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts in the coming weeks, we need to have a serious discussion about their implications for our fiscal outlook, including whether we can afford to permanently extend them before we have a real plan for long-term deficit reduction,” said Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.

Lets not forget that these are the same Democrats who REFUSED to send their 2008 budget to president Bush as they should have, knowing he would veto it, and instead held it over until after Obama was sworn into office the next year so that he could sign it.

Just wondering…does this have any impact on all of the “Budget Reconciliation” crap that was passed i.e. healthcare? I assume that the previous year’s budget would apply for healthcare, but just wondering about future boondoggles that these thieves will try to push through if there is no budget to reconcile to…

Give the poor Dems a break already, wingnuts! They’ve got a full plate what with Obama’s wars, the catastrophe in the Gulf, and all the bailing and nationalizing, bossing the world around sans spell check, shredding the Bill of Rights, bringing lawsuits, finger-pointing, cooking up a second Great Depression, never letting a good crisis go to waste, taxing the middle class and small businesses out of existence, stacking the SCOTUS with as many dumb prog broads as they can dredge up, shoving fascist nanny state legislation down the people’s throats and preparing for the midterm elections to attend to their actual Constitutional duties!

“If you can’t budget, you can’t govern,” Rep. John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., proclaimed in 2006 when the House GOP leadership chose to dispense with passing a budget resolution.

Good plan Dems, follow the lead of the GOP in 2006; that was a great year for the GOP and those are some footsteps you need to follow.

Don’t bother looking to see how it turned out, you know you’ve been blaming Bush and the Republicans for everything pre-2008 so clearly this worked and they held the majorities in the House and Senate with this trick.

I hope you have the same success holding majorities in the House and Senate that the GOP had in 2006 with this gimmick. It’s definitely a winner and something you should crow about in triumph… you’re going the way of the GOP in 2006… hooray.